Nineties New Queer Cinema icon Gregg Araki has not directed a feature since leaving Eva Green’s body frozen in the suburban snow globe of “White Bird in a Blizzard” in 2014. Since then, the DIY taboo buster has gone the way so many indie directors have to: by applying their personality to TV shows. In Araki’s case, that includes directing episodes of “Dahmer” and “American Gigolo.”
The iconoclastic Southern California filmmaker — known for “The Doom Generation” and “Mysterious Skin” and celebrated for his stylishly drawn stories of youthful sexual identity coming to bloom — also wrote and directed the 2019 series “Now Apocalypse.” Now, he’s teaming up with Karley Sciortino, the co-writer on that Starz show about sex and aliens in LA, for a new movie titled “I Want Your Sex.”
Araki revealed the project in early May, and it’s set up at Black Bear, most recently the production company that helped back the prison drama “Sing Sing.” “I Want Your Sex” stars Olivia Wilde in her first major role since directing “Don’t Worry Darling.” She plays artist Erika Tracy, who taps a young protégé as a sexual muse, with Erika taking him “on a journey more profound than he ever could have imagined, into a world of sex, obsession, power, betrayal and murder,” according to the official synopsis.
With “indie movies, people are all, ‘Are you doing a new movie?’ And I’m all, ‘I hope I’m doing a new movie!’ I never believe it, though, until I’m actually on set making it,” Araki told IndieWire in a recent interview when asked about the project.
“It’s a comedy, but it’s still one of my movies,” Araki said, meaning we should expect the same level of unhingedness and sexual energy of, say, “Totally Fucked Up” and “Nowhere” and “Now Apocalypse.” “It’s about Gen Z, and it has a little bit of that old movie ‘Secretary,’ another ‘old indie movie’ from the ‘90s,” he added. The cult classic “Secretary,” which premiered in 2002, starred Maggie Gyllenhaal as the “M” end of an S&M relationship with a high-stakes attorney, played by James Spader. Meaning “I Want Your Sex” will have plenty of wild psychosexual workplace antics up its sleeves.
But the movie hits for Araki in a more personal place as well. “One thing that is striking about talking about the ‘90s and the current day is the current generation doesn’t have sex,” the “Smiley Face” director said. And indeed, according to studies, celibacy is on the rise among a Gen Z frustrated with hookup culture and in response to the cultural sea changes around consent. There’s almost a demand from younger viewers to see less sex on screen, according to studies.
“I found that so shocking and strange. Looking back on my life, sex and sexuality and sexual identity have been key to my entire being and life and development as a person, and that’s why my films tend to always focus on those,” said Araki. “Olivia plays an artist in the movie, and she says things in the movie that I have said in interviews about how sex and sexuality are kind of what make us human. They’re such an important part of growing up and figuring out who you are, so that’s part of the movie, the importance of sexuality, and Gen Z and how they’re not having sex.”
“I Want Your Sex” is currently in pre-production. This fall, Araki’s “Teen Apocalypse Trilogy” — comprising “Totally Fucked Up,” “Nowhere,” and “The Doom Generation” — comes to Criterion Collection as a box set.
